5 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO (2024 Reviews)

How Keyword Research Tools Work

Keyword research tools refine your SEO strategy and digital marketing efforts by suggesting keyword variations and related keywords. For example, let’s you’re targeting the seed keywords “coffee”, “espresso”, and “cappuccino” for your cafe’s SEO. If you plug them into the tool, you’ll get keyword variations like “coffee near me”, “macchiato”, and “americano”.

Since all those additional keywords are coffee-related, you can consider targeting those keywords as well to strengthen your SEO strategy. While you can perform the keyword research process manually, these tools help you create more effective keyword strategies faster.

What Makes A Great Keyword Research Tool? 

With many keyword tools available online, you might find it tough to choose which one will work for you. Here are four things that keyword research tools must provide to be truly great: 

• Data completeness: A tool for keyword research doesn’t just need to provide a list of keyword ideas. It also needs to get into details about them, which means they must include the keyword’s traffic, ranking position, and SERP analysis. 
• Reliable data sources: Knowing where your keyword data comes from is also an important factor. At the very least, your tool for keyword research must take data from major search engines like Google.
• Ease of use: Keyword research tools don’t have to take years to master. The best keyword research tool should be easy to understand and allow any business owner to optimize and rank for their chosen keywords without too much training.
• Affordability: SEO software isn’t cheap. That’s why we’ve scoured the market for the most affordable SEO tools for small-to-medium businesses.

What Are The Benefits Of Using Keyword Research Tools

The right use of keywords significantly impacts organic page rank in search engines, especially when most people don’t look past the first page of search results. 

Here are three things you can do with keyword tools: 

• Perform Competitive Keyword Analysis: A keyword research tool helps you get a feel for the competition. By plugging in a competitor’s website, you’ll see the keywords it’s targeting. These competitive analysis results help you decide whether to target different keywords or attempt to rank higher for the same target keyword.
• Make SEO Development Easier: Ranking high on SERPs isn’t easy. However, keyword tools can do some of the heavy lifting for you by finding relevant keywords people often type into their search box. From there, you can build the right SEO strategy to take the top spot on SERPs.
• Find High-Value Keyword Ideas Faster: Shorter and more popular keywords are typically harder to rank for. Keyword planner tools help you find long-tail keywords, or longer and more specific phrases that make your content unique and easier to rank for compared to a broad keyword. Capitalizing on these untapped keywords is one of the best ways for your site to rank higher.

How We Evaluated The Best Keyword Research Tools

We evaluated our list for the best keyword research tools based on their relevance for different businesses, competition rating, keyword suggestions, and ability to create and save lists.

Some tools provide basic keyword ideation and insight into competitive SEO metrics, while others offer a full suite of analytics, unlimited searches, and a list for a limited number of keywords.

Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer is for users looking for comprehensive keyword research and content ideas in just two clicks. It’s a Google Chrome extension from Surfer SEO that gives you keyword analytics without leaving the search engine results page. This extension’s key features include:

• On-page keyword research: Get immediate access to search volume data, ideas for more profitable keywords, and more upon entering a search query on Google. 
• Keyword ideation tools: Find new keywords to create a content strategy way ahead of time.

• Competitor analysis: Analyze competitor keywords and see how hard it is to rank for each individual keyword.

Pricing

The Keyword Surfer browser extension and limited content editor are 100% free, while plans for Surfer SEO suite start at $59/month for a full content editor, SERP analyzer, and other SEO features.

Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz Keyword Explorer is an all-in SEO tool that lets you audit sites, track keywords, and do many other SEO-related tasks. Some of its marquee features include:

• Keyword planner tool: Search any keyword and see its monthly search volume, SEO difficulty score, and organic CPC rate. 

• Website crawler: Monitor your site’s SEO health to ensure it’s always optimized for high traffic.

• Link researcher: Addmore high-quality links to your site to improve your link-building strategy.

Pricing

Moz Keyword Explorer is free for up to 10 queries per month, while the Moz Pro plans start at $99/month for 150 keyword queries per month.

Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one platform for SEO, market research, social media, and many more that boasts the largest keyword database on the market. Some of its most prominent SEO features are:

• Extensive keyword research tools: Take advantage of six in-depth keyword tools to get the best keyword ideas. 

• Real-time content optimizer: Check your content piece for readability, originality, tone of voice, and SEO. 

• Massive keyword lists: Pull a list of keyword suggestions from over 800 million terms.

Pricing

Plans start at $119.95/month for up to 500 keywords to track daily, while its Business plan is at $449.95/month for 5000 keywords to track daily. 

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer offers a comprehensive keyword report to its users and relies on clickstream data to provide additional insight through click metrics, making it one of the best keyword planning tools available for content marketing. It also offers advanced features like:

• SEO project dashboard: Spot changes in key SEO metrics like health score and domain rating easily.

• Site explorer: Examine any website’s SEO profile in-depth simply by plugging in their link. 

• Keyword tracking tool: Get thousands of keyword ideas and analyze how hard it is to rank for them.

Pricing

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer’s plans start at $99/month with a 7-day trial available for $7. 

GetKeywords

GetKeywords is one of the best tools for local SEO keyword research. You can narrow your keyword results to the country, state/province, or even city level. On top of that, it also has features like:

• Real-time keyword analysis: Get real-time keyword research data every single time you search. 

• Location-based keyword metrics: Understand your audience to a local level with a database of the most high-volume keywords in any region.

• Historical trend dashboard: Analyze 4 years’ worth of search trends to build your strategy. 

Pricing

The free version allows unlimited basic keyword search. Paid plans start at $24/month, unlocking other tools like keyword difficulty and competitive insight dashboards.